Catholic Activity: Graduation Days

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Graduations, whether they be from grade school, high school, or college, offer parents an occasion to discuss different vocations with their children.

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Time goes by quickly. And though it appears to us mothers as if it were only yesterday that we took our little child on his first walk to school, graduation days are fast approaching — from grade school, from high school, from college. Each one of these days we celebrate as a family feast. This gives us an opportunity to talk to our children about their future, and to try to counteract, with all the weight of our affection, the influence of the world which holds out to the young the promise of "how to earn the most money." We impress on our children the meaning of the word "vocation," which is not restricted to priesthood or the religious life. "Vocare" means "to call," and every person on earth is called by God to a special place where He wants him or her. It may be that of a nurse or a teacher, of a salesman, of a worker in a plant or a missionary in Africa — but there is that particular place and we have to find it. One of the main reasons why there are today so many frustrated people is that most of them never managed to discover their true place in life. But if a girl is called to be a nurse, she will be very unhappy as a secretary, even if she has a much easier life. If someone is called to be a teacher, he will never be really satisfied as a business man, no matter how successful. In revealing to the children the great mystery of the vocation, we help to prepare them to make the right choice in life. The only question in the young mind should be What is the will of God? Where does He want me? Only by finding the place God has prepared for us will we be really efficient and happy.

Activity Source: Around the Year with the Trapp Family by Maria Augusta Trapp, Pantheon Books Inc., New York, New York, 1955